After taking over chairmanship of RBI in June, Sevelda delivered the bank’s six-month earnings report to investors in August. At that time, Sevelda was forced to announce an overall 60.2% decrease in earnings year-on-year; the CEO himself blamed RBI’s woes primarily to “catastrophic results in Hungary.”
Along with the August announcement, Sevelda stated that RBI would be scaling back operations in Hungary and a couple other countries in the region.
In an interview with Emerging Markets on Saturday, however, Sevelda’s outlook appeared slightly less grim. Explaining that Hungary is “our neighbouring country, it’s a partner in Austrian trade, there are a lot of Austrian investors in Hungary, and there’s a lot of emotion for Hungary in Austria. It was the first country where Raiffeisen went,” Sevelda assured that “I’m not excluding any possibilities, but for the time being we want to stay,” he said. “But we are uncertain about the government’s plans.”
The new line on RBI’s strategy for Hungary is quite a bit more optimistic than that of former RBI CEO Herbert Stepic, who had previously stated that “RBI would be better off exiting Hungary if only it could find a buyer.”
Sevelda’s stance also stands in the face of serious challenges: “The government has surprised us in the past several times with new taxes and artificial exchange rates and things like that. They all have one thing in common, which is that they cost a lot of money.”
Producing journalism that is worthy of the name is a costly business. For over 30 years, the publishers, editors and reporters of the Budapest Business Journal have striven to bring you business news that works, information that you can trust, that is factual, accurate and presented without fear or favor.Newspaper organizations across the globe have struggled to find a business model that allows them to continue to excel, without compromising their ability to perform. Most recently, some have experimented with the idea of involving their most important stakeholders, their readers.
We would like to offer that same opportunity to our readers. We would like to invite you to help us deliver the quality business journalism you require. Hit our Support the BBJ button and you can choose the how much and how often you send us your contributions.
